Senator Antonio Trillanes IV. Photo by INQUIRER.net’s Noy Morcoso III
The notes taken by Philippine Ambassador to China Sonia Brady of her meeting with Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV in Beijing last June included his boast that he was able to “make 40 Chinese ships leave Panatag Shoal.” While Trillanes now claims in media interviews that China had “80 to 100 ships” in the Shoal last May, the headline story of the Philippine Daily Inquirer on May 24 reported that while there were a total of 92 Chinese vessels in the Scarborough Shoal, according to the monitoring of the Philippine Coast Guard, they basically consisted of “16 fishing vessels and 76 utility boats.” They were not “ships” but “boats.”
Chinese “fishing vessels”, along with the unmanned “utility boats” attached to them, usually return back to their home ports after filling their cargo holds with their catch, so the departure of Chinese fishing boats, and their subsequent replacement by new ones, was not the result of any high level “back door diplomacy” by Trillanes.
But if you accept Trillanes’ claim that there were “80 to 100 ships” from China in the Scarborough Shoal last May, how could reducing it by 40 ships ease the tension in the Shoal when the Philippines only had two ships?
Was Trillanes’ “boast” merely the product of his hubris and inexperience in high stakes diplomacy or was he duped by China? Was he the Philippines’ “back door channel” to China as he claims or was it the other way around as many now suspect?
On September 14, 2012, the New York Times disclosed that “in May, the Obama administration quietly negotiated a deal that called for Filipino and Chinese vessels to leave the shoal. But the Chinese left behind a rope that still blocks the entrance to the lagoon, said two Asian diplomats familiar with the situation, who declined to be named per diplomatic protocol. Three Chinese vessels have apparently been left behind to ensure that no Filipino vessels attempt to cut the rope and enter the lagoon. According to a statement in August by the Philippines Defense Minister, it is “a long rope held by buoys at both ends of the entrance to the lagoon of the horseshoe-shaped reef.”
When the two Philippine ships left the Shoal, as part of an agreement negotiated by the US government in order to diffuse tensions, China’s three military ships remained and now effectively occupy the Scarborough Shoal.
Trillanes brags that he was chiefly responsible for “easing tensions with China,” tensions which were caused by the Philippine government’s assertion of ownership over the Scarborough Shoal, located just 125 miles from Masinloc, Zambales (within the 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone of the Philippines) and more than 550 miles from the nearest China port in Huanyin.
“Right now, there is no more crisis involving Scarborough but we were nearly brought to war,” Trillanes declared to the media last week. The crisis with China began on April 10 when a Philippine Navy frigate intercepted Chinese fishing vessels in the Scarborough Shoal which were poaching endangered marine species and corals. Chinese government vessels then appeared and “rescued” the Chinese fishing vessels and their cargo from the Philippine Navy.
With Philippine and Chinese ships locked in a “standoff” at the Scarborough Shoal, tensions soared. The tensions eased only after China duped the Philippines into believing that both sides would withdraw from the Shoal and only one side did. How is it that there is “no more crisis” in the Scarborough as Trillanes now claims credit for? Well, when a bully gets what he wants, tensions have been known to disappear.
Will this surrender to China pose a problem for Trillanes? Not according to him, because, as he assured Ambassador Brady in their Beijing meeting in June, “nobody in the Philippines cares about Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal.”
But in fact, a poll survey – conducted by Laylo Research Strategies from August 7 to 17 – of 1,500 Filipinos across 77 provinces “revealed that 7 in 10 or 69% are concerned about the issue, 24% are undecided and 7% do not consider it worth their while. Among those polled, Visayans expressed the highest level of anxiety with 77% of them articulating their fears.”
While Mitt Romney may not care about the “47%” of Americans who do not pay taxes, Trillanes similarly may not care for the “69%” of Filipinos who are concerned about the Panatag Shoal.
Trillanes first claimed that it was President Aquino who requested him to be the “backdoor negotiator” with China. President Aquino disputed this claim and told the press at the opening of the Aquino-Diokno Memorial: “What I remember is that Senator Trillanes contacted us and it seems he was in China at that time and someone approached him. He was asked about the possibility of acting as a backdoor negotiator.”
Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile, who accused Trillanes of being a “fifth columnist” for China, disclosed that a military attaché at the China Embassy in Manila had befriended Trillanes and that Trillanes, as ABS-CBN News reported on September 24, was thereafter “in frequent communication with Chinese Ambassador to Manila Ma Keqing, even as the Philippine government was sending her diplomatic notes to express its dismay at the height of tensions over the Scarborough Shoal dispute.”
Trillanes also admitted, in the same ABS-CBN interview, that he was “approached and assisted by the Federation of Filipino Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry Inc. in his back-channel negotiations with China from May to July.” It was also reported that Chinese-Filipino Taipan Lucio Tan, as then owner of Philippine Airlines, had arranged for Trillanes to obtain free first-class PAL tickets to China.
Without notifying Senate President Enrile, as protocol required, Trillanes engaged in at least 16 negotiations with “top Chinese officials” in Beijing. When he later met with Ambassador Brady in June, he told the Ambassador, according to her August 17 notes, that he agreed with his Beijing hosts that the United States was involved in “creating tension in Panatag Shoal”, that DFA Secretary Del Rosario was “committing treason,” that Del Rosario was “creating a war event,” that the Philippines “cannot enforce coastal protection since fishermen subsist only on fishing and cannot venture far out.”
Why has Trillanes engaged in a destructive word war with Enrile whom he now seeks to depose as Senate president? Why did he accuse Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario of committing treason for standing up to China? Why has he refused all requests from President Aquino to shut up and not to further inflame the situation and undermine the Philippine government’s dealings with China?
Perhaps because Trillanes suffers from what psychiatrists call a “psycho-pathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of power, relevance, or omnipotence.”
After all, let us not forget that Trillanes is the graduate of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) who led a group of 321 armed rebels (“Bagong Katipuneros”) to seize control of the Oakwood Premier Ayala Center in Makati on July 27, 2003 after disarming the security guards, planting claymore mines around the building and posting snipers at the Oakwood roof deck.
A fact-finding commission later determined that the Trillanes rebellion was “not a spontaneous phenomenon as extensive preparations and mobilization activities were undertaken prior to the occupation and control of the Oakwood Apartments” and that it was part of “an overarching plot to overthrow the government.”
Trillanes’ dreams of leading a revolutionary junta that would rule the Philippines ended unsuccessfully within 18 hours when the Filipino masses did not rally to support his cause as he had expected. Trillanes and his men were forced to surrender peacefully and they were all charged in a general court martial and incarcerated.
But Trillanes’ messianic dreams were revived when he won election to the Philippine Senate in 2007 despite his incarceration, perhaps because the Filipino people somehow saw in his seeming idealism their hopes for a government free of corruption. Or perhaps because it was a highly visible way for the people to express their disgust with the corruption of the president who had incarcerated Trillanes.
Other countries may label Trillanes a “terrorist” for planting claymore mines in a hotel filled with innocent civilians and may lock up the perpetrator in solitary confinement for life. But in the Philippines, that “terrorist” is a senator of the Republic and, who knows, with the backing of China, may yet someday see his messianic dream fulfilled.
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